T. Gregory Dewey, University of Denver, USA and Hanspeter Herzel, Innovationskolleg Theoretische Biologie, Germany.

We are soliciting papers, abstracts and referees for a special track on the applications of information theory in biology. This track will be held as part of the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB-00), Hawaii, January 2000.

Background and Areas of Interest

Information theory offers a number of fertile applications to biology. These applications range from statistical inference to foundational issues. The applications of information theory can be broadly categorized into two main areas. These are:

    Information theory as a tool for statistical inference.

    Information as a fundamental quantity in the control and regulation of biological phenomena.

There are a number of statistical analysis tools that can be considered information theoretical techniques. The two main tools are algorithmic complexity and maximum entropy. In PSB over the past two years we have seen algorithmic complexity used to analyze a number of biological phenomena. Applications include sequence searching and alignment, phylogenetic trees, structural classes in proteins, protein potentials, calcium and neural spike dynamics and DNA structure. We also encourage submissions dealing with maximum entropy methods. These methods have found widespread applications in spectral analysis and image reconstruction. Additional applications have appeared in nucleotide sequence analysis, protein dynamics, peptide structure and drug absorption.

50 years after Shannon's pioneering paper, entropy has become an integral part of several biological disciplines dealing with information storage and transmission. Examples are kin recognition, evolution and neuronal coding. Information theory is particularly relevant in several areas of molecular biology. Well-studied applications are the recognition of DNA binding sites, multiple sequence alignment and gene-finding using a linguistic approach. Genetic networks have also been studied with information-theoretic tools. In all these cases, the information content of the system or phenomena is of intrinsic interest in its own right.

Purpose of the Session

The goal of the session is to bring together researchers working on a broad range of applications of information theory to biological systems. We strongly encourage participation from individuals with interest in "real world" statistical applications as well as those concerned with fundamental aspects of information in biology. We seek to highlight the breadth and diversity of applications of information theory to biological systems.

Submission of Papers

Full paper submission and publication is required for oral presentations. Each full paper will be reviewed by at least three independent referees. PSB publications are indexed on Medline and should be viewed as short journal articles. Accepted papers will be published in a hard-bound archival proceedings, and the best of these will be presented orally to the entire conference. Poster and demo sessions are available for researchers who wish to exhibit their work, but do not wish to prepare a full paper. Researchers participating in the poster session should submit an abstract.

All papers must be submitted to altman@smi.stanford.edu in electronic format. Papers should be submitted by July 12. Please format your paper according to instructions found at ftp://ftp-smi.stanford.edu/pub/altman/psb/. Papers are limited to 12 pages within this format.  Each paper must be accompanied by a cover letter. The cover letter must state the following:
* The email address of the corresponding author
* The specific PSB session that should review the paper or abstract
* The submitted paper contains original, unpublished results, and is not currently under consideration elsewhere.
* All co-authors concur with the contents of the paper.

Travel Support

In previous years, PSB has been able to offer partial travel support to a number of participants. See the PSB website for more information and travel application forms.

For additional information contact: